‘Unsatisfactory’ Mega-Contractor Re-Ups on Another Big Military Deal

A DynCorp International employee performs aviation support services, July 2006. The firm has recently been criticized for shoddy construction work in Afghanistan — but that didn’t stop the Air Force from giving it another lucrative contract. Photo: DynCorp/Flickr

Just days after an inspector general report revealed that a giant Pentagon contractor performed “unsatisfactory” work in Afghanistan, the U.S. Air Force awarded the firm another multimillion-dollar pot of cash.

Virginia’s DynCorp, which performs everything from private security to construction for the U.S. military, has re-upped with Air Force to help pilots learn basic flying skills on the T-6A/B Texan II aircraft, a training plane. The deal is only the latest between DynCorp and the Air Force on the Texan II: In June, the Air Force Materiel Command gave the company a deal worth nearly $55 million for training services. The latest one, announced late Thursday, is worth another $72.8 million, and lasts through October 2013.

But the base-construction contract is far from DynCorp’s only deal with the U.S. government that’s raised eyebrows. In December 2010, it won a fierce competition with the company formerly known as Blackwater to retain a contract for training the Afghan National Police worth up to $1.04 billion. That award came after years of criticism of the Afghan police’s competence and integrity — and after DynCorp guards assigned to protect President Hamid Karzai were fired for drinking and whoring; and also after late payments from DynCorp landed a 75-year old American subcontractor in an Afghan jail. If that wasn’t enough, just this week, the inspector general called the sustainability of the Afghan soldiers and police into question, although it didn’t single out DynCorp as a reason.

DynCorp is hardly the first firm to keep winning large government and military deals despite a spotty performance or integrity record. But it might be the first to re-up mere days after an instance of apparent misconduct comes to light.